


halfway between worlds, too afraid to let go

by MusicWritesMyLife



Series: i want you here, now, all night [2]
Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: (sort of), Angst, Canon? What Canon?, Death and Resurrection, Diana meets the Trevors, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Gods and Goddesses, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-World War I, Post-World War II, Rumination on philosophy and human nature, Steve Trevor Lives, The Holocaust, World War II, references to mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 04:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17542400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicWritesMyLife/pseuds/MusicWritesMyLife
Summary: It feels as though she’s waiting for something.She knows what she is waiting for, though it will never happen. Steve is dead.(Steve follows her every day, wishing, praying to every god he knows that he can send her some sign that he’s still here, in spirit, if not in body.)She moves on.(Or: Diana, in the aftermath.)





	halfway between worlds, too afraid to let go

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many feels about these two, sometimes I just want to scream, but instead, I write long, angsty character study fics. 
> 
> This picks up where the previous story, "conflagration" left off; however, it does also stand alone. 
> 
> Title comes from "ghosts" by the formidable Beau Taplin.

_you said_

_‘never forget me’_

_as if the coast_

_could forget the ocean_

_or the lung_

_could forget_

_the breath_

_or the earth_

_could forget the sun._

-Beau Taplin, “A Reminder”

 

_._

_._

_._

 

The plane (and — _I wish we had more time, I love you_ — Steve) vanishes in a blaze of light.

Diana’s scream isn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of her heart shattering.

* * *

 She thinks she sees him in Trafalgar Square. There is a moment when she looks through the crowd, before she sees his picture on the wall, where she thinks she sees him out of the corner of her eye, but it is just a trick of the light. A mirage. Her mind, showing her what she wants so desperately to see.

( _It’s not!_ Steve shouts, but she does not hear.)

* * *

 It feels as though she’s waiting for something.

She knows what she is waiting for, though it will never happen. Steve is _dead_.

(Steve follows her every day, wishing, praying to every god he knows that he can send her some sign that he’s still here, in spirit, if not in body.)

She moves on.

* * *

 Charlie, Sammy, and Chief do not linger long after the war ends. They have their own lives to return to, family and friends, though they promise to visit and write. Sammy kisses her full on the mouth — “Since there is no one here to sock me in the jaw for it,” he jokes.

Diana laughs. “It is not up to him,” she says, and though her voice is light her heart is heavy with remembrance.

(Steve wouldn’t have socked Sammy in the jaw, he’d just have kissed Diana deeper.)

It took some persuading, but Etta managed to secure Steve’s old flat while they were in Belgium. He is not here to live in it, but neither Etta nor Diana think he would mind her using it.

(He doesn’t.)

Etta helps her find a job as a secretary with the War Office. Even though this war is over, it seems, they must be prepared for the next one.

“They should not have called it the war to end all wars,” she tells Etta.

“Yes, well, they couldn’t bloody well call it what it was, could they?” Etta mutters, frantically scribbling something on a piece of paper. She presses too hard into the paper; the lead snaps and she looks up, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

Diana does not see why she needs to apologise. It is something that the English do far too much of. It is not a crime to be angry, she says, and Etta — whose husband was taken away to the hospitals on the front, who changed her name to keep her family safe — has as much reason to be angry as anyone.

Etta does not understand why Diana is _not_ angry. She is, sometimes so much so that she shuts herself up in her room and screams until she has no voice left, but she is not angry with governments, or generals, or kings. The one she was angry with is nothing more than a spectre, a phantom.

There is no use being angry with the dead. This war was not the fault of one man, but many — all of them, perhaps. Pointing fingers will not bring her peace.

* * *

 Diana learns quickly that it is not easy to live amongst men. The clothes are still strange to her, thick layers of skirts and petticoats that stick between her legs. She misses the freedom of her armour, tucked away in a chest tucked away under what used to be Steve’s bed. She misses the warmth of the sun, the salt in the air, the sand beneath her toes. She misses the laughter of her sisters and the comfort of her mother’s embrace.

_If you leave, you may never return_.

She could, if she wanted to. She could leave her job and sail for Themyscira and never look back on this world. Her mother was right. They do not deserve her.

_It’s not about deserve. It’s what you believe._

Steve would not give up on these people. Steve _died_ because he believed in these people. Steve had hope, and it is a dishonour to his memory to forget it.

So she stays.

She starts doing the crossword puzzle in the _New York World_. Steve used to do them every Sunday, Etta says; she tells Diana over a cup of tea in Steve’s tiny, cluttered office how he used to curse like a sailor when he couldn’t solve a clue.

“Almost lost my eyeball once — he used to throw his pencil when he was frustrated and I was coming out of the loo at the wrong time.”

Some people might find it hard to reconcile this Steve — passionate, easily frustrated — with the calm, rational man who presented himself to his superiors, but Diana thinks of the man she knew — the man she _loved_ — who clutched her arms desperately and begged her to come with him to help save the world, the man who pleaded with her mother for help on behalf of thousands of innocent strangers, and thinks it is very much like him indeed.

The puzzles are difficult at first, especially when her grasp of his culture is still so small, but, slowly, it gets easier. She likes to sit on her balcony with a cup of tea and a sharpened pencil and struggle through them in the morning, as the city wakes below her. Sometimes, she thinks she can almost feel Steve there with her.

(Steve doesn’t have the luxury of throwing his pencil anymore, but he still curses like a sailor when Diana solves clues before him.)

* * *

 Six months after the war is over, Diana finally unpacks the last of Steve’s things. Etta packed up his office for her, left a neat stack of boxes in the bottom of the bedroom closet that Diana hasn’t been able to bring herself to open.

She spends a whole afternoon on the floor, surrounded by his belongings. There is little to sort through: some clothes, some books, a meagre assortment of personal possessions. The contents of Steve’s whole life, packed in a few boxes. It seems strange that there is so little left of this man who looms so large in her life — who loomed so large in the lives of every man, woman, and child, though they do not know it.

They are alike in that regard, she thinks. The only reminders she has of her home are her armour, tucked away in a chest under the bed, and a long black cloak she stole from her mother. The great furs were never to Diana’s taste, but she wanted some last thing of her mother’s to take with her. To remind her of home.

The last item she unpacks, tucked in the bottom of a box, is a photograph. The frame is tarnished, the glass cracked, but Diana cannot mistake Steve’s face, split in that familiar grin. He is wearing a clean suit and looks hardly a day over eighteen.

What strikes her the most, though, are the others. Two girls — young women — sit on either side of Steve; both, despite their carefully groomed appearance, have Steve’s impish smile. An older couple — his parents — stand behind. His father is serious, one hand on Steve’s shoulder, the other around his wife’s waist. His mother is kind, with a soft smile and gentle eyes that remind Diana of nights curled in her mother’s lap, listening to stories of ages past.

This is Steve’s family, the people he loved and left behind to go fight a cause not his own. These women live still.

Diana is not the only one who loved Steve. She is not the only one who lost him, and it would serve her well to remember that. 

* * *

 It takes another six months to save up money for a passage to New York. Etta offers to loan her the money, but Diana refuses. She does not need charity, and Etta, with her young and growing family, needs the money for herself. She has earned it, and Diana can earn a living for herself as well.

“Are you sure you don’t want to write ahead?” Etta asks as they navigate the crowded docks. Diana thinks of the morning they boarded a boat to Belgium; the docks were crowded then too, only with the wounded and downtrodden. These faces are full of hope, families seeking a new life. A fresh start. “I could get a telegram to them — We’ve got his address on file somewhere.”

Diana shakes her head. It is a kind offer — not surprising; Etta has been nothing but kind to her — but she is afraid that if she writes they will tell her not to come and she must go. They deserve to know how he died, how he sacrificed himself so that humanity might live. She knows British Intelligence gave him a medal, she watched Etta pack it into a box to mail to Mrs Trevor, but pieces of metal and empty words about honour and courage and patriotism do not bring closure. Diana does not know if she can bring closure, either, but she hopes to help.

She stands on the rail, eyes closed, breathes in the smell of the sea spray, and thinks of another journey, many years ago. Of a man who loved his wife so much he went into the depths of the earth to bring her back — and almost succeeded.

She has thought about Orpheus often in the months since Steve’s death, thought of Eurydice and their love and wondered if she, too, should go looking. Her mother told her that Ares killed the gods, and maybe she is right, and maybe this is why Diana hesitates to search for her uncle’s kingdom, why she pauses at the notion of bringing Steve back. She would, in a heartbeat, if she could, but the war stamped out her optimism. Perhaps, even if Hades is alive, he will not let Steve go, and then what will she do?

Diana has always known she was different. Even when she was a child, she knew she was not like the other Amazons. Her mother pretended that their refusal to let her train was for her own protection, but Diana saw the way she pushed the other Amazons in their training, how she insisted that every woman learn to defend themselves. It was their duty, she said, to protect their homeland in times of war, a duty from which Diana alone seemed to be exempt. Antiope was the only one who understood her, who knew that she only wanted to fit in, but even she trained Diana differently: she pushed her harder than any of the others, as if she were preparing Diana for something greater. Diana always thought it was because Antiope believed in her potential, but now she knows it was to prepare her for what she would become.

Diana never asked for any of this. She left Themyscira because she believed it was her sacred duty to protect mankind, as an Amazon, and while she might have saved mankind, it came with the realisation that she could never belong anywhere. She is cut off, set apart from everything she has ever known and loved because of a father she has never known. A father who, for all she knows, has been dead for millennia.

Many would call her heritage a gift, but to Diana, it is a curse.

(Steve stands beside her, watches the wind dance through her curls, and wishes more than anything — more than life and death and honour and the end of the bloody _war_ — that he could be there with her. He doesn’t regret what he did — he can’t not when he saved so many, not when he did so much _good_ — but he regrets that they never had _time_. He regrets that Fate or Providence or the gods forced his hand before he could bring her home to his mother, or introduce her to Tilly’s ever-expanding brood, or show her the place he grew up. There are so many things he wants to do, and watching her do them without him has him itching fiercely to _live_.)

(He’d give anything to have another five minutes with her. To tell her he was sorry, if nothing else.)

* * *

 The Trevor farmhouse is bigger than she imagined. Perhaps it is because the only images of farms she has ever seen are in newspapers, or maybe it is because things in England are simply smaller. The brief glimpses of America that Diana has seen on her travels from New York City to Iowa have shown her that everything here is _big_. Americans, it seems, do not have any concept of smallness.

(Steve chuckles at that; he can’t help it, not when it’s so damn _true_.)

And yet, somehow, it is exactly as she pictured it. Steve spoke very little of his childhood in the time they were together — it was not the time or the place, he said, and she agreed — but he did speak to her of golden fields and blue sky as far as the eye could see. His words were so vivid, so clear, that she was almost transported from her bed in Veldt, his fingertips tracing patters her skin, to the plains of Iowa. She could feel the sun on her face, taste the grit in her mouth.

Stepping onto the Trevor farm is like stepping back in time. If Diana didn’t know better, she would say she could feel Steve’s fingertips on the small of her back, could feel the warmth of his smile as he leads her up the drive.

“Welcome home,” he’d say.

(Steve swallows the lump in his throat as Diana strides purposefully past his outstretched hand as if it isn’t there. She still thinks he is a ghost, a figment of her imagination, and he does not know how to convince her he is real. The gods warned him it might be like this, but he chose not to believe them. He chose to believe that Diana would see him, would _know_ him. It hurts to realise they were right.)

She nearly turns around on the doorstep. Her fist is raised to knock when she pauses, considers. Perhaps this is not the right course to take. Perhaps it is best if she simply stays away. The Trevors may have moved on, and coming here, bringing grief and ghosts and wounds that are still fresh and aching and raw may only make things worse. It has been over a year. Time passes more quickly, perhaps, for those who do not have eternity looming ahead of them.

She is about to descend the stairs again when hinges creak behind her, and a voice says, “Diana. I was wondering when I might finally meet you.”

Photographs, Diana thinks, do not do Helen Trevor justice. Standing next to her husband, she seemed small, and though she is small in stature, she stands tall. She has lost so much, and yet her spine has not bowed beneath the weight of grief. She holds her chin high, shoulders squared; her eyes sparkle with a fire that could never be captured by fading sepia tones. Her hair, coiled at the base of her neck, is darker than Steve’s, but her eyes are the same sharp, piercing blue. She does not wear skirts like all of the other women Diana has met — like Diana herself, desperate to blend in, to _belong_ — but a shirt and trousers, both faded from the sun. There is dirt under her fingernails and dust in her hair. If she were a god, she would be Demeter, Diana thinks. Mother of the earth, goddess of the harvest. Fierce and kind and loving, but not afraid to let her children go.

Not unlike her _own_ mother.

“I—” Diana swallows the lump in her throat. “I do not mean to intrude. Perhaps I should have warned you of my coming—”

“Nonsense,” Helen says briskly. She pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and wipes her hands. “Steve wouldn’t shut up about you in his last letter, going on about how he thought he’d finally met the one, but didn’t think he deserved her — which is codswallop of course; that boy never did appreciate his own worth. I figured you’d come around eventually. Tilly and Evie are dying to meet you.”

Diana does not know what to say. All she can bring with her is talk of loss and pain and death, and yet they welcome her with open arms. They have been _awaiting_ her.

(Steve grins. “I knew Ma would love you, angel.”)

She shakes her head to clear the phantom cobwebs from her mind. Steve is not here. Steve is _gone_.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. For the first time since the plane exploded over frosty Belgian fields, Diana feels the overwhelming urge to cry. She cannot remember the last time she truly shed tears — she never had reason to, before, and after Antiope died everything happened so quickly that there was hardly any time to grieve.

After Steve died, she felt only emptiness.

It is as though something has unhinged inside of her, like a great dam bursting forth. Once the tears begin to fall she cannot stop them. She sobs and trembles and screams until there is nothing left inside of her, until the emptiness creeps back into her bones. Its cold is welcome. She is tired of feeling. Of hurting.

Helen Trevor holds her the whole time. Diana imagines that some of the wetness on her cheeks is the other woman’s tears, but when she pulls away, Helen’s eyes are dry.

“I miss him,” she whispers. It is hushed, like a confession. A secret.

Helen squeezes her tightly. “I know.”

* * *

 Diana’s first night in Iowa is chaos. She meets Steve’s entire family: chats with uncles and aunts and cousins at the dinner table, watches them yell and fight and laugh with one another. They are boisterous and loud and unruly.

She understands now why Steve never had much respect for the rules.

She spends the most time with his sisters. They are sharp and smart and full of opinions; they are warriors in their own way and time, and so much like Diana’s sisters that it hurts. Evie regales Diana with tales of her life as a journalist in Chicago, while Tilly speaks of the challenges of teaching and raising children.

“My husband helps,” she says, when Diana asks how she can manage. “Which is more than a lot of women can say.”

Evie laughs loudly, head tipped back. “It’s why I’ve never bothered with men.” She winks. “Women are so much more dependable.”

It is late, or perhaps early, when Diana crawls into her bed in Helen’s spare room. The family has long since left, but she can still feel the echoes of them in the house. Being here, in a place that is so full of Steve and yet not, makes the pain easier to bear, somehow.

(Steve stands by the window and watches Diana sleep.)

The next morning, she rises with the sun and pads into the kitchen, swaddled in Steve’s old dressing gown. Helen is already at the stove, making breakfast.

_Is this what people do when there are no wars to fight?_

_Yeah… This and other things._

_What things?_

_Uh, well… they have breakfast. They love their breakfast. And, um, they love to wake up and read the paper and go to work, they get married, make some babies, grow old together. I guess._

_What is that like?_

_I have no idea._

“Mornin’, hon,” she says. “What do you want? Eggs? Bacon? Hash browns? Sausage? A bit of everything?”

Diana, who has never eaten anything for breakfast but toast, oatmeal, and war rations, stares at the assortment of food in awe.

“Steve was right,” she says, without meaning to. “Men do love their breakfast.”

Helen laughs. “ _Steve_ certainly loved his breakfast. Thought he was going to eat us all out of house and home for a while.”

Diana thinks of the man she knew, the one who always served himself last and who would have given away every last one of his rations if he thought there was someone who needed it more. She will never know this man, the one who climbed trees with his nephews and ate breakfasts in the kitchen and did the crossword puzzles on his tiny balcony.

“I will have everything,” she says.

Helen smiles, and begins heaping food on a plate. There is a wildness to her, a fierceness, that makes Diana think of another Helen, in another time, a woman who ignored the rules of her time and fought instead for what was right. The storytellers blame Helen for the war, but it is the men who are to blame, the kings who sought glory above all else. Helen fought for freedom and love and what was right.

Helen Trevor is a woman who fights for these things. 

Steve’s watch is heavy in the pocket of her dressing gown. She thinks of the look on his face when he spoke about it, about his father and his mother and how he was meant to keep it safe. She thinks of Helen, who has lost her husband and now her son. Diana cannot bring either of them back, but she can give her this.

She pulls it out of her pocket before she can think better of it. “Steve gave me this.”

Helen looks at the watch in her hands, leather strap worn from the caress of fingertips — Steve’s and now Diana’s. “I told him to keep it safe,” she says. A bittersweet smile twists at the corner of her mouth.

“Here.” Diana thrusts the watch at her. She hates to part with it, this last piece of him, but he told her it was his father’s before it was his; it must mean far more to Helen, who has lost so much, than it ever could to her. “He would have wanted you to have it.”

Helen shakes her head. “Steve loved that thing — even when his father was still alive, he used to love looking at it, playing with it, watching George clean it. I don’t think he took it off once after George gave it to him. The fact that he gave it to you —” She closes Diana’s fingers gently over the watch, just like Steve did months ago in a darkened air field.

_I wish we had more time. I love you_.

She swallows the lump in her throat.

“He wanted _you_ to have it, my dear. Besides, I have more than enough memories of that boy in this house.”

Her tone brokers no argument, just like her mother’s used to when Diana begged for one more story or five more minutes on the training ground, but her eyes tell Diana that no amount of memories will never be enough to ease the loss.

She thinks of Menalippe’s face, raw and anguished, as she stood by Antiope’s funeral pyre. Diana thought she would never understand a sorrow so deep, so boundless, but by the gods she does now.

She thinks Helen Trevor does, too.

* * *

 She boards the steamer in New York, bags filled with gifts from her new family. Helen insists on sending her home with three boxes of books Steve left behind. (“I was only meant to have them temporarily and they’ll only gather dust here. He’d be thrilled for you to have them; lord knows he’d have made you read them eventually if he were here.”) Evie gives her three old dresses and the address for a tailor in London “who’ll do whatever you want with them, honey. Skirts, trousers, you name it—she’ll make you look like a queen.” Tilly promises her an advance copy of her next novel in return for letters. “You’re one of us now, Diana,” she says firmly, squeezing Diana’s hands in both of hers, “and we Trevors take care of our own.”

Diana swallows the lump in her throat, smiles and promises to visit again. To her surprise, she is sad to leave. She came here to close the pages of this story, only to find that she has left the first unfinished and begun another.

They wave to her from the pier, and for the first time since she left her mother on the island shore, the ache in her chest lessens.

Steve’s book collection is marvellously eclectic. There are adventure novels with battered paper covers and penny romances, which she gives to a delighted Etta and her husband. When she produces the novels proudly from her bag at tea, Etta howls with laughter. “You know, Steve used to buy me one of these every week. I always wondered how he got such excellent taste in them.” She wipes her eyes, smiling fondly at her husband. “He was something, that Steve Trevor.” Some, she gives to the neighbourhood school — mystery novels, well-thumbed children’s stories, a mathematics textbook tucked in the corner of one box like an afterthought. The rest, she keeps for herself. History books, books of poetry, novels, essays on politics and justice. These are the books Steve loved: the spines are cracked, margins filled with notes and drawings and endless questions. Some are obviously gifts ( _A Vindication of the Rights Of Woman_ is inscribed with a note from Evie: _I saw you reading Mill the other day and thought you should have the other side of it, too_ ; _The Iliad_ signed with best wishes from his father) though most appear to be purchased out of interest.

Reading these books, seeing men and women of centuries past who argued for equality and government accountability and freedom, she begins to understand why Steve saw the world in shades of grey. It is impossible to fault humanity entirely when she reads these treatises full of optimism and desire. People are not perfect, Steve once told her. Here, in these ink-stained pages, she believes him.

Humanity can be better. Perhaps, in time, with love, they truly can live in peace with one another.

* * *

 In her dreams, Steve’s plane explodes in a ball of flames.

She wakes in Steve’s dark apartment, gasping, cold sweat dripping down her back. She is alone, in bed, sheets rucked around her hips. It is 1923. Steve has been dead for five years, and yet every time she wakes from one of these dreams it feels as though that grey November morning was only yesterday.

This, she supposes, is her penance. If she had tried harder, if she had refused to let him go, he would still live. She could have forced him to stay on the ground. He was merely mortal; she is the child of a god.

“It was my choice, Diana,” the ghost at the end of her bed says softly. “You had to stop Ares, and I had to save them.”

This is not the first time she has conjured Steve’s ghost. She sees him everywhere — on street corners, in shop windows, sitting beside her in the coffeeshop in Camden Town. He lurks in the corner of her eye, a phantom of wishful thinking, but each time he returns she finds it harder not to believe he is real. (Perhaps, a small part of her whispers, he is not a figment of her imagination after all. The dead are her uncle’s dominion. Perhaps, like Ares, he is not dead after all.)

_You didn’t have to save them_ , she wants to shout. _I could have saved them._

He smiles sadly, like he can read her mind. “Your mother could have stopped you from leaving too, but it was your choice in the end. This was mine.”

She knows he is right. It does not make her feel any better.

* * *

 Twenty years pass, and they are at war again. Another great war, they call it, as if they have forgotten that the first one was supposed to end them all.

It is not the same as it was then. Weapons are more advanced, strategy more complicated. Innocents are still killed, but millions of them are now slaughtered with intent, herded into ghettos and camps as though they are no better than animals.

Diana’s heart aches as air raid sirens pierce the night.. Ares is gone, she is sure of it this time, and yet the atrocities now are worse than she could have ever imagined.

More than ever, she wishes Steve were here. She wants him by her side, fighting these horrors, but mostly she needs him because he _understands_ , because he sees the hope, the light, in humanity so much better than she does.

It is funny, she thinks that it used to be the reverse. Once it was she who was optimistic for the future of mankind, though she thinks now that was because she did not understand their nature. Steve was the one who could truly hope for them because he understood their darkness and believed in them all the same.

“I have to go,” she says softly. The bombs have rained down on London for nearly a week. The War Office is abuzz with activity, but Diana cannot sit at a typewriter or take notes in a meeting when innocents are being slaughtered. There is a note already drafted on her desk, an excuse about sick family members that necessitates her return to the country.

In her mind, she can see the look in his eyes, knows that he’s thinking of the last time those words were said, on a night they’d both rather forget.

The ghost that has lingered by her side all these years smiles sadly. “I know.”

(Steve still wishes she didn’t think of him as a ghost, but he’d rather talk to her as a figment of her imagination than not talk to her at all.)

It is different this time. She is not in the trenches with the soldiers; she does not charge across no man’s land or cast aside mortars with her shield. It is not the soldiers who need her help, but the people. She frees civilians from the remains of their homes, smuggles Jewish families out of Paris. She puts on heels and lipstick and takes tea with German officers, simpers and smiles while they tell her of their plans and raids their bases when they are asleep. She is angrier this time, angry and sad that men cannot understand how to live peacefully with one another, cannot see the beauty in each human life.

This time too, it is only Chief by her side. Charlie and Sameer and Etta are too old, too tired from the last war to be on the fronts this time, though Diana knows they are elbow-deep in the war effort at home. It is for the best, perhaps, that he is the only one; he has seen many wars like this before, wars that destroyed the people he is sworn to protect. He knows what it is to be cursed to walk among men, to watch history repeat itself over and over.

“Yours are not the only gods in this world,” he says quietly, and there is a twinkle in his eyes that makes Diana think maybe he has known her truth all along, even before she did.

She smiles thinly. “I do not know that my gods are still in this world.”

Chief shrugs. “The gods are everywhere, so long as you believe.”

_Do you forget the gods?_ Antiope’s voice whispers in her ear. _Do you no longer believe?_

Steve did not believe.

( _I did,_ he thinks to himself, _but not soon enough_.)

“I used to believe many things,” she says quietly.

Diana has witnessed less than three decades, and already she is tired. She does not know how Chief has survived millennia.

She cannot save everyone. She knows that this time, understands that there are too many lives in danger and too many battles on too many fronts.

Knowing does not make it any easier, nor does it make her try any less to save them all.

She sees Steve more often now. She wonders if it is the war that brings this ghost so often to her side, if she thinks about him more often here on the muddied fields of France. After a while, she stops thinking about it all together. Whether he is real or merely a figment of her imagination is irrelevant; whatever form he takes is a comfort.

“You should sleep,” he says as she curls by the light of another fire in another forest, limbs trembling with exhaustion. “You aren’t invincible.”

“Neither are they,” she replies stubbornly.

* * *

 There is a trial at the end, for those responsible. Diana goes, pulls back her hair and sits in the upper gallery with the few members of the public that are allowed in. She dresses in black, for the dead. Her hat stays low, shading her eyes from view.

The prosecution tells the judges that the forces of international law are on the side of peace. Diana is not sure they understand what peace means anymore. Sometimes, she wonders if they ever did.

It is for the greater good, they say. This trial is for the good of mankind, so that _men and women of good will, in all countries, may have leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law_. The British lawyer says it like the lines are not his, like he is quoting the way Sammy used to quote lines from plays and films that he loved as they struggled to the front.

“This will not change anything,” she says to her ghost, later, alone in her apartment, waiting with the rest of the world for the judgement. Everyone knows how the ruling will go. It cannot go another way; Diana is the only one who knows that it will not make a difference. “If man makes the law and man is corrupt, then those who live under the law cannot be free of mankind’s rule. Corruption will prevail.”

“They’re trying,” the ghost replies. (He wishes they would try harder, but Rome wasn’t won in a day.) “All they can do is what they believe is right. That’s all anyone can do.”

“This will not bring peace. They will fight again, and if they continue to go on like this— I do not know how long I can bear it.”

_They do not deserve you_ , her mother said.

_It’s not about deserve. It’s what you believe_ , Steve said.

Diana doesn’t know what she believes anymore.

* * *

 Diana has been amongst men for nearly half a century when she attends her first wedding.

It is Etta’s granddaughter, Sara. Sammy is there as well, and Charlie. Chief sends his best wishes. They are the only ones who know Diana’s secret: to everyone else, she is just Diana Prince, a friend of the family’s, visiting from Paris.

Sara is a vision. Her dress is simple and she wears flowers in her hair, like the maidens of Themyscira on festival nights. Her groom, Eddie, looks at her as if she is made of starlight.

Steve looked at her like that once, on a snowy night in an inn in Veldt. The candlelight flickered on his face as he smiled, as he breathed her name as though she was everything he ever needed.

She asked him once, before the bombs and the trenches and _they get married and have children and grow old together_ , what marriage was.

_They go in front of a judge and promise to love, honour, and cherish each other until death do they part_.

_And do they?_

_No._

Sara and Eddie stare at each other like they can drown in the other’s eyes, like there is no place they’d rather be, and Diana thinks _they will_.

_I would have_.

(“I would have too,” Steve whispers. “I _do_.”)

Etta cries quietly into her handkerchief for the whole ceremony. Diana feels the warm prickle of tears in the back of her eyelids, but it is not until much later that they fall.

* * *

 There are more wars, too many more, but she does not fight in them. Humanity, she has decided, does not need her on the battlefield.

(Steve watches her, sees the bitterness in her eyes that he recognises so well from his own mirror, and his heart breaks a little more. There must be a reason, he tells himself, that they won’t let him be with her.)

(There is, he remembers. A bullet and a plane full of poisonous gas and his own _martyrdom_.)

Instead, she tries to make a difference in the lives of those that are left behind. It begins with a story in the newspaper, detailing the thousands of art pieces that were taken by the Nazis. Priceless relics, family heirlooms, stolen to fill their own palaces and coffers. The headline alone makes Diana sick.

The government tries to cover it up, talks about red tape and the chaos of war and _proof_. These people have no proof, they say, and Diana laughs bitterly because how can they have proof? Everything they had was taken from them before they were herded into camps like they were no better than animals and slaughtered. Many of those whose collections were raided never survived.

It is not difficult to track down the stolen pictures. Men are not careful about these things, blinded by their own sense of intelligence. They believe that because they have money and vaults, they are safe. Returning them is the least she can do — she cannot bring back their families, but she can help them restore their dignity.

(Steve is so full of pride, of _love_ , he thinks he might burst.)

* * *

 One by one, her friends leave her behind.

Antiope is the first, what seems like a lifetime ago now, though Diana did not know at the time that she would only be one of many. Steve followed too quickly after, taking all her dreams of returning humanity to their natural goodness and wisdom with him. Charlie is next, fifty years later, and still too soon. She flies to Scotland for the funeral, holds Sammy’s hand as he cries into a handkerchief.

(Steve is by her side the whole time, fist clenched with effort to keep from reaching out and touching her. Diana is not the only one who cries.)

Sammy follows not long after Charlie, surrounded by his family. His life is celebrated in loud, vibrant colours, in free-flowing drinks, and raucous songs sung around the piano.

Etta—strong, brilliant Etta, who put them all in their place more times than they could count and never failed them when they needed her most—is last. It is fitting, Diana thinks to herself, that she should be last, when she was the glue that held them all together for so long.

Only Diana and Chief remain, looking exactly as they did in 1918. Their friends have aged, gone grey and frail and passed on, leaving them alone to remember them.

“The greatest tragedy in this world is time,” she says quietly, staring out into the sunset. Chief stands beside her; together they watch the sun die in a ball of flames over the Brighton pier. Etta was buried this morning. It seems fitting that her life should end in such fiery glory. “There is never enough of it. Everything is taken from you, in the end.”

Chief’s smile is small, knowing. He has seen far more of the mortal world than Diana. He has shaken the bitterness from his bones, made peace with the lives he could not save, and the ones he wished he could. “Time is a gift,” he says. “The gods give it to us, but it is what we choose to do with it that matters. _You_ must find the purpose in your life. When you have lived as many lives as I, you will know this too.”

_I have lived enough lives already_ , she thinks. _Perhaps too many_.

* * *

 She lives quietly for many years. She gets a job at the Louvre, working in classical restoration. She surrounds herself with artefacts of the people that were once her own, paints plaster samples and shards of pottery that could have come from Themyscira, and tries not to think too much about the home she left behind. Her work keeps her busy, and while she is not quite _happy_ , she is satisfied. The world is still corrupt, still at war, but Diana has learned to find the goodness, the moments of peace, wherever she can.

She is at work when the Superman arrives. She watches the news feed on her computer, sees one man — one alien — save the world from a god, and thinks about a time, long ago, when she would have done the same thing.

(“You _did_ the same thing,” Steve whispers, but his words are lost to the wind flapping the hotel curtains.)

It is some months until she meets the man himself: a mild-mannered journalist sent to cover the opening of a collection of Greek artefacts displayed at the Metropolis Museum. He wears glasses, square and black-framed, not unlike the glasses Steve picked out for her at Selfridge’s a lifetime ago.

They are no more of a disguise for him than they were for her.

His name is Clark Kent. He is polite and courteous and reminds her a little too much of Steve

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he scoffs. Diana’s fingers tighten on the stem of her champagne flute but she cannot being herself to wish her ghost away.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she murmurs. The woman beside her casts her a sidelong glance, but Diana can’t bring herself to care. It hurts less this way; it is easier to pretend he isn’t gone. That she didn’t kill him.

( _You didn’t_ , Steve tells her over and over again but she does not listen.)

_I can do it. Let me do it._

_No. It has to be me. I can save today. You can save the world._

She might have, once, but not in a long time.

* * *

 Bruce Wayne is nothing like Steve. She sees him for the first time at a party, a black-tie affair the director of the department has persuaded her to attend because she is “so much better with people” than he is. She watches him make the rounds of the room, charming and courteous, watches the way women flock towards him, the way they fawn and blush and sigh at his smiles. Everything about him screams money and sex and carelessness.

Diana knows it is an act.

They say that there are five stages of grief, but for Diana there is only one: emptiness. It has been nearly a hundred years and yet Steve’s loss is still a gaping hole inside her. She stays, she lives, because it is the right thing to do, because it is what he would have wanted for her. She fights for humanity because he loved them enough to die for them in all their imperfections, but she cannot love them. The gods know she has tried, but all she still feels rudderless, as though she has been set adrift. Steve Trevor was her compass in the man’s world, she thinks, and without him the needle is still spinning, trying to find true north. 

Bruce Wayne has that same emptiness in him.

She does not approach him that evening. She could, perhaps should, even — he is the kind of man who would make a generous donation to the museum, or fund a collection, exactly the sort of thing the Jean-Michel has sent her here to collect — but the haunted shadows lurking behind that charming smile keep her away. They are not ready to meet one another, she thinks, not when his wounds are still so raw.

They will meet, eventually, she is sure of it, but for tonight, she will let him have his women and his drinks and his empty smiles.

 

* * *

 They bury Clark on a Saturday. Kansas is grey and clouded, which Diana thinks is appropriate. The earth, at least, knows how to honour a fallen hero, even if men do not.

She and Bruce both keep an eye on Lois in the weeks after his death: Bruce because he feels responsible, because it is his way; Diana, because she knows all too well what it is like to feel your world shatter in an instant, because she understands that the sacrifices of noble men leave scars on those who survive.

Bruce prefers to do his watching from the shadows, to lurk unseen in the wake of those he cares for. Diana has never been one for subterfuge. Steve jokes she would be a terrible spy.

“You’re too honest,” he says, smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she retorts.

“It’s not.” He brushes a lock of hair from her face. “Honesty is a hard thing to come by, nowadays. If more people took a leaf out of your book, the world might be a better place.”

Diana has given up on trying to make the world a better place.

So, while Bruce hovers behind his computer screens and car windows, Diana takes Lois for coffee.

“He gave his life to save them,” she says quietly, fiddling with the edge of her coffee cup. The brew is strong and bitter, and still not enough to soothe the ache in her soul.

“He saw the good in them. People.” The corners of Lois’ mouth twitch sadly. “It’s what made him such a damn good reporter. He cared about the little things. He believed everyone should have a voice, that it was the responsibility of those with power to fight for those who were weak.”

“I knew a man like that once,” she says, thinking of the watch tucked in her breast pocket, against her heart, and of a photograph, now lost, of blue eyes and a soft smile. “He gave his life for this world, these people. It has taken me a long time to understand why.”

Lois is not like that. Lois has a backbone of steel and a nose for the truth. She asks the hard questions, no matter the cost. She is determined to get to the bottom of Clark’s death, no matter the cost.

Diana loves her for it.

Bruce, less so.

“Whatever you’re up to, I want in,” Lois says firmly. They’re at her apartment, the ungainly trio that meets once a month to share a meal and try and pay homage to the man whose death brought them together in the first place.

Bruce shakes his head, mouthful of chow mein. The image is ridiculous enough that Diana has to stifle a laugh. “Absolutely not.”

“It might not be a bad idea,” Diana says quietly. She is leaving for Paris in the morning, returning to her apartment and her job and her life. Bruce has told her he will do the leg-work, and she is happy to let him. He’s better at playing the detective. “She will be more useful than I. Besides, she has connections that might be useful. A woman can still pass unseen in many places a man cannot.”

(Steve hates that this is still true.)

“It’s not safe,” Bruce insist, and then, more quietly: “It’s not what he would have wanted.”

“What I do isn’t up to anyone. He knew that,” Lois says fiercely, and Diana is in a ballroom again, staring into the eyes of the man she loves.

_What I do is not up to you_.

(He knows that now. He knew it then too, but he was so terrified of what might happen to her if Ares was real that he convinced himself otherwise.)

“Besides,” she continues, and though the weary smile that curls at the corner of her mouth is a shadow of what it used to be it is brighter than it’s been in a long time, “he was always terrible at keeping secrets.”

Diana smiles, thinking of an ill-fated trip to Selfridges, of glasses and petticoats and Steve’s hand on her arm, trying to help her blend in. “I was always surprised that so few others found out his identity. The glasses did very little in his favour.”

Bruce huffs a reluctant laugh.

“You know I’ll just figure it out on my own,” Lois adds.

Neither of them can deny it. Bruce heaves a long-suffering sigh, one that conveys his disapproval for this plan, and says, “We’re assembling a team.”

Bruce says an apocalypse is coming. Diana can feel it crackling under her skin, the tension of a world bracing itself for apocalypse. She knows the legends, grew up listening to stories of mother boxes and creatures from far away. _Apokalips will return one day_ , Antiope always said.

It is futile, but she cannot help hoping that day will not come.

* * *

 Steve comes back to her on a Wednesday.

It is a drab day, storm clouds threatening on the horizon. The air has turned colder, with a bite to it that signals the approach of winter. Parisians bundle themselves in hats and scarves, clutch their coffees a little closer, couples huddled together to stay warm.

Diana does none of these things. She long ago consented to let the wind burn her cheeks, to feel the sting in her eyes. November is a time for remembrance, penance. A time to remember things lost.

(She remembers the red tip of Steve's nose as he helped pack up their camp in the dawn light, turtleneck pulled up against the chill. She remembers his breath misting across her face, his hands clenched in hers. _I can save today, you can save the world._ )

She comes to Veldt every year on the anniversary of his death. She traces their last steps together, through the fields that were once an airstrip, has a coffee in the tiny inn where they spent the night. In the dim light, she can almost see couples dancing amid the falling snow, revelling in freedom they had long thought lost.

Their freedom did not last long.

Diana’s belief in fate, in the gods, has waned over the years. She is not sure that she shares her mother’s belief that they are dead, but she no longer prays to them for guidance. There is nothing they can give her.

Or so she thinks.

A couple sits at the table across from her. The woman is young, russet hair rippling over her shoulder; the man is older, dark hair peppered with silver. They are both strikingly beautiful; the kind of beauty that draws the eye and takes the breath from your lungs. It is the kind of beauty that is not of this world.

Diana’s spine stiffens. She has been on this earth one hundred years, and she has never once encountered the gods. If they are here, if they have been alive all this time, they have not shown any interest in her. And yet, it cannot be coincidence they are here. The gods do not act without reason. They do not offer anything without the promise of something in return.

The man rises from his chair, presses a kiss to his wife’s cheek before he makes his way inside. The woman sits alone for a moment, sips her coffee, and then unfolds herself from her chair. Diana looks away, tries to focus her attention on the newspaper, but she has hears the clip of heels on cobblestones and knows she has been caught.

“Hello, Diana.” She is a slip of a thing, wearing brown, wide-legged trousers and a colourful turtleneck. There is a lightness about her, a youthful joy, that Diana has not felt in a century. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Have you?” The question is sharp, sarcastic; Steve, it seems is rubbing off on her more and more.

Persephone smiles. “You saved us, you know. We were not strong, after Zeus defeated Ares. The victory cost us much, but now that he is gone— We are in your debt.”

“I did what I had to do,” she replies curtly.

“And more, I think.” Persephone sips her coffee; a secretive smile curls around the corners of her mouth that makes the hair on the back of Diana’s neck stand on end. “Enough to deserve recompense.”

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice rises to mind again. Diana will not let herself hope. _The gods do not grant wishes freely_ , Antiope whispers in her ear. _Everyone must pay a price._

“The price you have paid is great enough, I think,” the goddess says softly.

Diana swallows the lump rising in her throat. She thinks of Steve, her companion all these years, mysteriously absent in this moment. Could it be—?

“Tell me, Diana, what is it you want most in the world?”

_Steve_ , she thinks.

There is a flash of light in the fields.

Diana runs.

* * *

 It’s cold.

That’s the first thing Steve notices when he are opens his eyes. The sky above is drab and grey, which is odd because it should be sunny and warm and that face—

_No_. He sits up and immediately puts his head between his knees to fight the blood rush. His memories are tangled, sticky, like cobwebs. The island, the plane, Diana—but no, that was the first time. This time, he was in a plane, but it was dark. Cold.

Diana’s eyes were confused, but with anguish, not curiosity.

_Steve. Steve._

Her voice, pleading.

_I can do it. Let me do it._

Something stirs in the back of his mind. He is dead, or at least he was, and Diana— He followed her, he thinks. There was a war, or was that before?

Wind rustles the grasses around him. He is in a field, like his father’s fields back at home, only it’s never this cold in Iowa, not in the summertime. It must be summertime here — the grass is too green for the fall.

The grass was green in Belgium, he remembers. Most of it was gone, churned up by tanks and mortars and the feet of thousands of men, but in the places it remained, it was green, even in December.

“ _Steve!"_

Diana shouted after him, raw and pleading, as he ran down the runway, chasing his destiny. She’s running towards him now, but it must be a memory, a dream, he’s _dead_ and she’s—

“ _Steve_.”

—she’s on her knees in front of him, hands on his face, eyes filled with tears. She is exactly as he remembers, young and hopelessly beautiful, but there is a sadness in her eyes, a darkness that reminds him of his own reflection: of sleepless nights and guilt and the worst horrors of humanity brought to life. It isn’t 1918 anymore.

“Hi.” It’s all he can think to say because he’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he’s _alive_ , even though he knows he blew himself to smithereens. He’s missing a piece of the puzzle, a memory dancing just out of reach, but for now, all that matters is that he is alive, that Diana is alive, that they have _time._

 

_._

_._

_._

_all hearts are heavy doors,_

_some open, some don’t,_

_but nothing of any worth_

_is ever left without a lock._

_so if she’s who you truly want_

_you’ll wait out in the cold,_

_knock until your fists are bruised_

_through summer, winter, fall_

_because nothing comes easy,_

_the very least of all love,_

_and anything that does_

_is an illusion, nothing more._

_see, i have waited out for months._

_seen others come and go,_

_but i would wait for thousands more_

_because she’s where i belong._

\- Beau Taplin

 

**Author's Note:**

> The line 'men and women of good will, in all countries, may have leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law' is a direct quotation from the prosecution's opening statements at the Nuremberg trial. 
> 
> There will be more parts forthcoming, because my muse for these two can never leave me alone for too long.


End file.
